But if we catch the lout, we'll sort the bugger out!
This is to tell lout whether to use the character mapping.
Why talk rubbish, lout that you are--a real peasant! came rebukes from all sides addressed to the jesting soldier.
The flashbacks are quite well done in filling in the MacLeod story; in the earlier flashbacks, he is basically an illiterate young lout, and he accrues education, culture, and a moral sense as his Immortality continues.
They looked down on the Syrian, they thought the Berber a lout and a plebeian, they scorned the renegade, and called him a slave and son of a slave.